“Joanna M. Weston’s A Bedroom of Searchlights brings to vivid, eidetic life wartime Britain and an artist mother’s gentle but indomitable grace and pluck as a divorced, single mother in an unforgiving era. Weston movingly weaves the Kentish countryside, paintings and sculptures, childcare and courage into a tapestry of flowers and aromas that enliven the reader’s sensory memories. Memorable metaphors conflate war trauma, poverty, mothering and painting: “to shoot bouquets through/ a magnitude of armies” (Background of Flowers); “she laid children/ beside hawthorn hedges/ pulled them through/ with lavender lacing.” (Missing Children); “(she) ate gesso/ and layers of colour/ before she turned pages/ sang a picture for dinner.” (Necessities). Grief is eloquently and sometimes obliquely expressed: “all of us/ loosing motherhood/ into future wombs/ because we can/ no longer/ knit children” (Thread of Motherhood) and synaesthetically: “sunflowers tulips/ hang over her palette/waiting for red and gold/to cut grief in half.” (Two Ghosts). This poignant, soulful and tender extended elegy plays the heart like a harp and lingers long afterwards.”
–Katerina Vaughan Fretwell, author and artist of Dancing on a Pin

“In Joanna M. Weston’s A Bedroom of Searchlights we meet Mother who painted in oils, played a spinet and sang, embroidered her daughter’s dresses and fulfilled all her domestic duties single-handedly after her divorce at the outbreak of war. Weston’s masterfully measured poems, create, piece by piece, a picture of Mother as intricate and strongly coloured as the paintings on her easel. Part lament, part love song, part celebration of a woman’s heroism in the face of heartbreak … these haunting poems lead us back to Mother’s life but also show us the way women’s lives forge links to future generations. This is a beautiful collection which I enjoyed reading very much.”
–Pam Galloway, author of Passing Stranger